She stopped, for Ormiston’s step was at the door. I had naturally—not from any ungenerous curiosity to scan her feelings—raised my eyes to her countenance while she spoke to me, and could not but mark that her emotion amounted almost to agony. Ormiston entered: whatever his feelings were, he concealed them well; not so readily, however, could he suppress his evident astonishment, and almost as evident vexation, when he first noticed my presence: an actor in the drama for whose appearance he was manifestly unprepared. He approached Miss Russell, who never moved, with some words of ordinary salutation, but uttered in a low and earnest tone, and offered his hand, which she took at once, without any audible reply. Then turning to me, he asked if Russell were any better? I answered somewhat indefinitely, and Miss Russell, to whom he turned as for a reply, shook her head, and, sinking into a chair, hid her face in her hands. Ormiston took a seat close by her, and after a pause of a moment said,
“I trust your very natural anxiety for your brother makes you inclined to anticipate more danger than really exists, Miss Russell: but I have to explain my own intrusion upon you at such a moment”—and he gave me a glance which was meant to be searching—“I called by the particular request of the Principal, Dr Meredith.”
Miss Russell could venture upon no answer, and he went on, speaking somewhat hurriedly and with embarrassment.
“Mrs Meredith has been from home some days, and the Principal himself has the gout severely; he feared you might think it unkind their not having called, and he begged me to be his deputy. Indeed he insisted on my seeing you in person, to express his very sincere concern for your brother’s illness, and to beg that you will so far honour him—consider him sufficiently your friend, he said—as to send to his house for anything which Russell could either want or fancy, which, in lodgings, there might be some difficulty in finding at hand. In one respect, Miss Russell,” continued Ormiston in somewhat a more cheerful tone, “your brother is fortunate in not being laid up within the college walls; we are not very good nurses there, as Hawthorne can tell you, though we do what we can; yet I much fear this watching and anxiety have been too much for you.”
Her tears began to flow freely; there was nothing in Ormiston’s words, but their tone implied deep feeling. Yet who, however indifferent, could look upon her helpless situation, and not be moved? I walked to the window, feeling terribly out of place where I was, yet uncertain whether to go or stay: for my own personal comfort, I would sooner have faced the collected anger of a whole common-room, called to investigate my particular misdemeanours; but to take leave at this moment seemed as awkward as to stay; besides, had not Miss Russell appeared almost imploringly anxious for me to spare her a tête-à-tête?
“My poor brother is very, very ill, Mr Ormiston,” she said at last, raising her face, from which every trace of colour had again disappeared, and which seemed now as calm as ever. “Will you thank Dr Meredith for me, and say I will without hesitation avail myself of his most kind offers, if anything should occur to make his assistance necessary.”
“I can be of no use myself in any way?” said Ormiston with some hesitation.
“I thank you, no,” she replied; and then, as if conscious that her tone was cold, she added—“You are very kind: Mr Hawthorne was good enough to say the same. Every one is very kind to us, indeed; but”—and here she stopped again, her emotion threatening to master her; and Ormiston and myself simultaneously took our leave.
Preoccupied as my mind had been by anxiety on Russell’s account, it did not prevent a feeling of awkwardness when I found myself alone with Mr Ormiston outside the door of his lodgings. It was impossible to devise any excuse at the moment for turning off in a different direction, as I felt very much inclined to do; for the little street in which he lived was not much of a thoroughfare. The natural route for both of us to take was that which led towards the High Street, for a few hundred steps the other way would have brought us out into the country, where it is not usual for either tutors or undergraduates to promenade in cap and gown, as they do, to the great admiration of the rustics, in our sister university. We walked on together, therefore, feeling—I will answer at least for one of us—that it would be an especial relief just then to meet the greatest bore with whom we had any pretence of a speaking acquaintance, or pass any shop in which we could frame the most threadbare excuse of having business, to cut short the embarrassment of each other’s company. After quitting any scene in which deep feelings have been displayed, and in which our own have been not slightly interested, it is painful to feel called upon to make any comment on what has passed; we feel ashamed to do so in the strain and tone which would betray our own emotion, and we have not the heart to do so carelessly or indifferently. I should have felt this, even had I been sure that Ormiston’s feelings towards Mary Russell had been nothing more than my own; whereas, in fact, I was almost sure of the contrary; in which case it was possible that, in his eyes, my own locus standi in that quarter, surprised as I had been in an apparently very confidential interview, might seem to require some explanation which would be indelicate to ask for directly, and which it might not mend matters if I were to give indirectly without being asked. So we proceeded some paces up the little quiet street, gravely and silently, neither of us speaking a word. At last Ormiston asked me if I had seen Russell, and how I thought him? adding, without waiting for a reply, “Dr Wilson, I fear from what he told me, thinks but badly of him.”
“I am very sorry to hear you say so,” I replied; and then ventured to remark how very wretched it would be for his sister in the event of his growing worse, to be left at such a time so utterly helpless and alone.